I ran my fingers gently along the hard cover of the notebook. A ribbon peeked out by the side, soft and cream coloured.
When I skimmed through the contents, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Just her writing about how her day went at the strip club and how she felt while dancing for men each night.
To be honest, she was a good writer because I could paint a vivid image of everything she wrote in my head.
She also had a section, describing everything she liked. Of course she mentioned that she loved the colour purple and that she loves donuts. She also mentioned loving her boyfriend, Fred.
I scanned the pages and was about to drop the diary when I saw something on the last page.
It read— Dear diary, some bad guys are after me. I'm not sure I would live any longer.
Throughout the rest of that page, the same sentence was written over and over again— "I don't want to die."
I flipped till I got to the end. Sadly, there weren't any other write-ups to throw more light on what I had just read. It seemed Bella knew that she was going to die, but it didn't make sense because Ivy told me the head accident happened because of someone sabotaging her heels.
I dropped the book and stood up from the egg chair, then crashed into the bed. Reading that part of Bella's diary made a sudden chill run down my spine. I would be mortified if I found out that someone was after my life. I had already died once and I didn't want to die again.
I wasn't even aware when I started feeling dizzy. The bed felt really soft and comfortable and I ended up sleeping.
Surprisingly, when I woke, I wasn't feeling the pain in my forehead from the place that was stitched. I placed my hand there and the thread had fallen off, replaced with a tiny scar that barely caused any pain even when I touched it.
The voice echoed in my head, snapping me out of my state of sleepiness.
[Task one almost completed. Reward: Recovery and minimal pain from the injury. Let's move on to the second task.]
Huh?
I rubbed my eyes and stretched my limbs while letting out a yawn. A quick glance at the clock revealed that it was 3pm. The afternoon sun was hotter than before I slept.
I was about to crash into bed and continue with my sleep when the voice rang again.
[Task two: Shop for the sexiest yellow colored lingerie you can find. Mr. Dom likes the colour yellow.]
I straightened myself on the bed with my brows crinkling in confusion.
"What exactly are you saying?" I muttered in response.
Voice: Failure to carry out this task would bring about excessive headaches from the stitch which may result in death.
That insane voice in my head was definitely bluffing. What sort of weird task was that? Shop for lingerie? The last time I did such, it ended in disappointment. And which man prefers yellow to all the other varieties of colours. To hell with the voice and Mr. Dom.
I laid on the bed and covered myself with the soft duvet. I needed another round of sleep to clear my head from all the weirdness around me.
The sleep was short-lived as a sharp pain throbbed through my forehead. It felt like my head would split in half. I rolled over from the bed and landed on the floor. I staggered to get to my feet, and my knees knocked against each other.
What was happening to me?
I heard the voice amidst the blur of chaos.
[Accept the second task and ease your pain or reject it and the pain accelerates.]
So, this wasn't just a joke. I was going to die from headaches if I didn't accept the silly task of lingerie shopping.
I touched my head which was hot like it had been dipped in fire. I crashed to the ground again.
[Accept in ten seconds or lose this chance]
The voice began doing a countdown from 10…9….8…7…
It had barely gotten to six when I couldn't contain the pain and weakly admitted to accepting the task.
Voice: Congratulations, you have been assigned a new task.
The pain subsided and I took several heavy breaths. My skin was clammy from all that sweating.
Now that the pain was gone, what if I still refused to do the task? Would the pain return?
The voice rang again as if reading my thoughts. [Any form of cheating would be rewarded with death.]
I swallowed hard. There wasn't any escape route from these absurd tasks. Perhaps I should dive more into Bella's life and see what her life was all about.
It couldn't be so hard shopping for lingerie. I searched through the clothes in Bella's closet. There was a lot of lingerie, but none of them were yellow.
Her payment cards sat pretty on the table, and she had already written the passwords to most of her accounts in her diary.
I picked up the credit card which would be simpler to use and headed to the store that sold all types of women's clothes, and of course also sold lingerie.
As I walked into the lingerie section, I felt a bit awkward like all eyes were on me. I was someone who would never walk into a store to buy one. I would rather order from an online store than a physical store.
"The one and only Bella is back to shop with us." I heard a light sounding masculine voice say.
I turned around to meet a man standing there. He was wearing black shorts with a pink shirt. His hair was styled to the side and he had a small nose ring.
"Come on girl, are you here to shop for what would make you hot. Let me show you around." From his hand gestures, I could tell that he was gay.
It was obvious that he was a friend of Bella. I managed to chip into his gist. He had a lot of vibe and selected the best yellow lingerie for me.
I was about to make payment when he looked at me with a frown.
"Have you forgotten that all your shopping for the next three months is on the house?"
"Really?"
"Of course, girl. You're one of our best customers."
"Thanks. I nearly forgot."
"No issues," he muttered. He proceeded to pack my clothes into a bag.
I was still at the counter, when I met with one of the most familiar faces I had known in my past life. It couldn't be him.